Use the files.list
method to search
for files and folders.
Search for all files and folders on the current user's My Drive
Use the files.list
without any parameters
to return all files and folders.
Search for specific files or folders on the current user's My Drive
To search for a specific set of files or folders, use the query string q
with
files.list
to filter the files to return.
This example shows the format of a query string:
query_term operator values
Where:
- query_term is the query term or field to search upon. To view the query terms that can be used to filter shared drives, refer to Search query terms.
- operator specifies the condition for the query term. To view which operators you can use with each query term, refer to Query operators.
- values are the specific values you want to use to filter your search results.
For example, the following query string filters the search to just return folders:
q: mimeType = 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder'
The following example shows how to use a client library to filter search
results to file names and IDs of JPEG image files. This example uses the
mimeType
query term to narrow results to files of type image/jpeg
. This
example also sets spaces
to drive
to further narrow the search to the
drive
space. When nextPageToken
returns
null
, there are no more results.
Java
String pageToken = null;
do {
FileList result = driveService.files().list()
.setQ("mimeType='image/jpeg'")
.setSpaces("drive")
.setFields("nextPageToken, items(id, title)")
.setPageToken(pageToken)
.execute();
for (File file : result.getItems()) {
System.out.printf("Found file: %s (%s)\n",
file.getTitle(), file.getId());
}
pageToken = result.getNextPageToken();
} while (pageToken != null);
Python
page_token = None
while True:
response = drive_service.files().list(q="mimeType='image/jpeg'",
spaces='drive',
fields='nextPageToken, items(id, title)',
pageToken=page_token).execute()
for file in response.get('items', []):
# Process change
print 'Found file: %s (%s)' % (file.get('title'), file.get('id'))
page_token = response.get('nextPageToken', None)
if page_token is None:
break
Node.js
var pageToken = null;
// Using the npm module 'async'
async.doWhilst(function (callback) {
drive.files.list({
q: "mimeType='image/jpeg'",
fields: 'nextPageToken, items(id, title)',
spaces: 'drive',
pageToken: pageToken
}, function (err, res) {
if (err) {
// Handle error
console.error(err);
callback(err)
} else {
res.items.forEach(function (file) {
console.log('Found file:', file.title, file.id);
});
pageToken = res.nextPageToken;
callback();
}
});
}, function () {
return !!pageToken;
}, function (err) {
if (err) {
// Handle error
console.error(err);
} else {
// All pages fetched
}
})
To restrict the search to folders, use the query string to set the MIME type to
q: mimeType = 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder'
Query string examples
This table shows some basic query strings. The actual code differs depending on the client library you use for your search.
What you want to query | Example |
---|---|
Files with the title "hello" | title = 'hello' |
Files with a title containing the words "hello" and "goodbye" | title contains 'hello' and title contains 'goodbye' |
Files with a title that does not contain the word "hello" | not title contains 'hello' |
Folders that are Google apps or have the folder MIME type | mimeType = 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder' |
Files that are not folders | mimeType != 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder' |
Files that contain the text "important" and in the trash | fullText contains 'important' and trashed = true |
Files that contain the word "hello" | fullText contains 'hello' |
Files that do not have the word "hello" | not fullText contains 'hello' |
Files that contain the exact phrase "hello world" | fullText contains '"hello world"' |
Files with a query that contains the "" character (e.g., "\authors") | fullText contains '\\authors' |
Files with ID within a collection, e.g. parents collection |
'1234567' in parents |
Files in an Application data folder in a collection | 'appDataFolder' in parents |
Files for which user "test@example.org" has write permission | 'test@example.org' in writers |
Files for which members of the group "group@example.org" have write permission | 'group@example.org' in writers |
Files modified after a given date | modifiedDate > '2012-06-04T12:00:00' // default time zone is UTC |
Files shared with the authorized user with "hello" in the title | sharedWithMe and title contains 'hello' |
Files that have not been shared with anyone or domains (only private, or shared with specific users or groups) | visibility = 'limited' |
Image or video files modified after a specific date | modifiedTime > '2012-06-04T12:00:00' and (mimeType contains 'image/' or mimeType contains 'video/') |
Search the corpora
Searches that call files.list use the
default
corpus by default.
To search other corpora, such as files shared to a
Google Workspace domain,
use the corpora
parameter.
Multiple corpora may be searched in a single query, though
incomplete results may be returned if the combined corpus is too large. If
incompleteSearch
result is true
, not all documents have been
returned.